


A Different Kind of Strength

by pendragonfics



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Adopted Children, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Dynamics, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, Hank Anderson Swears, Light Angst, Like, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, gender neutral reader, no pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 01:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18129107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendragonfics/pseuds/pendragonfics
Summary: Ever since you both processed the adoption and got a set date when you and Hank would receive a tiny addition to the family, he's been absent, in both your bed and the house itself.





	A Different Kind of Strength

**Author's Note:**

> I had a sort of writer's block-thing going on and I was inspired by the idea of Hank Anderson finally finding a person who he could explore making a family (again) with.

The sun in your eyes was bright, streaming tiny rainbows through your eyelashes. Instead of closing the curtains, you adjusted the chair, and continued at your work. There was a sense of urgency to it, now; there was only three weeks until the date set by the agency, and your spare time was occupied it at every turn. If Hank wasn’t regularly at the station, he’d see your near-neurotic obsession with detail, with everything that could go wrong and what needed to be right. But he wasn’t here right now, and for that you were somewhat glad.

By the time the sun moved behind the neighbour’s tree, you realised that time had passed - a considerable amount of time - and your stomach noticed it too. You wanted to ignore it again, but it rumbled once more, and as you sent the work you had completed to the printer, you trod toward the kitchen, aware of the silence in the home.

As you heated up a Tupperware of last night’s enchiladas, you moved to the calendar on the fridge. Each day was marked out in your penmanship - a little lax since school, but at least it wasn’t Hank’s scrawl - down to each day, everything that needed to be done. _Three weeks!_ It was so close that your excitement couldn’t be curbed these days. As the microwave signalled the end of its cycle, you took the contained back to the desk, and read over the printed documents, word-by-word as you mindlessly munch on your food.

Your phone vibrated halfway through page three, and you only checked it when another message came through at page seven. _might be home late, paperwork is a bitch_ , he wrote, and, had sent a picture of what looked like a stack of folders, so full they looked to be bursting. You sigh, and return to looking at your own papers, but not before sneaking a look at the time. 3:00PM.

Looks like you’d be going to sleep alone again.

* * *

A week has passed, and you’ve been fixating lately on the room down the hall from yours and your husband’s. Even though the painters have already come by weeks ago and it’s all set up, you fuss over the little things. Not that it must be perfect, but…you want it to somewhat be. The cot is tiny compared to yours, and the dresser has clothes that you stocked up on, in different sizes too. You run a duster over the top of the table under the window, and watching the dust motes fly in the sunshine, you place a hand there, and stay still.

In fourteen days, all the plans would be a reality. All the pre-selections and the selections, and the vetting, all the sleepless nights and nights spent staying up, speaking with Hank about all the things that will happen. The clock above the cot reads 6:00PM, and it’s when you notice that when you hear it.

The sound of the front door shutting.

Alert, you move stealthily to the front of the home - Hank hasn’t gotten home this early in the last month, and you certainly weren’t handing out keys to the house like wedding confetti. Quietly, you take a framed photo of the wedding from the wall, and armed, you have the upper hand on the intruder. Until, that is, they turn, and see you.

“_________, what are you doing?” Hank eyes the photograph, and you lower it, placing it on the coffee table.

“Nothing,” you reply, and add, confused, “You’re home early.” You watch as Hank sheds his jacket and walks toward the bedroom. He’s tracking road sludge over the carpet; it’s then you realise that it’s been raining. “…I was considering going down to the precinct to give Fowler a piece of my mind if you came home late again.”

Hank shook his head; you could hear it in his voice, through the walls. “Fowler doesn’t care what I do with my overtime.” Walking out to the bathroom, you follow, staying by the door. “-besides, I’m not home for long.”

You frowned. “Not home for - what, do you have to go check out a new crime scene at this hour?” you asked him, incredulous. “C’mon, Hank…”

He washes his face, staring at the reflection that hid behind his beard and post-it notes. It was as he stood up that you noticed that his sling, usually hidden by his jacket, was empty of his gun and badge.

“This can’t wait.” He tells you.

You bite your lip, moving involuntarily as Hank returned to the bedroom. As he rifled through his end of the closet, you watched, feeling something small and ugly growing in the bottom of your stomach. “Are you sure?” you asked, watching your husband closely. “Hank, please don’t go. There’s spanakopita -,”

He hesitates, but without looking in your eyes, he passes by you, and right out the door he just came through.

Sumo approaches you as Hank’s car roars to life and quietens as it goes away. You look to the dog with a wistful gaze and, give him a scratch behind the ears. He nudges you calf, and feeling a wave of sadness come over you, you move to the kitchen to put Hank’s portion of the pastries in the fridge.

“At least you’re still here,” you tell Sumo.

* * *

Today’s the day, and you’re nervous as anything. But the jitters are a part of you now, ever since the adoption agency found you, the Anderson family, approved as a good match for one of their infants. As you wake, you reach out in the sheets, trying to find the other warmth that usually sleeps late. _Hank_. But when your fists find emptiness, you jolt to awareness faster than you anticipated. Slipping from the sheets, you seek the blaring fluorescent light of the bathroom that stings the back of your eyes with its glow.

Your knuckles graze the doorframe as you hear a retch. “ _Henry_?” you whisper.

“It’s not locked,” His voice is thick. Peeling the door back on its squealing hinges, you see him. Cradling the bowl like he does you, the seat is shut over his head, and his head faces the water inside. You move to the side of the bath, and with one hand pushing the seat from his silver hair, you push the hair from his face with the other. “I woke you.” He says. It’s not a question.

If you weren’t sitting on the side of the bath, you’d be beside him on the chipping tiles, but no matter where you are, you still feel like you should be sinking into the earth beneath you all. “The baby comes today, Hank…and you, you got drunk last night. Again.”

He shakes his head, but the movement triggers his nausea, and he relives whatever he ate for dinner last night in reverse. When he comes up gasping, a drowned fish, you wait until you hear an answer for where he’s been. What he’s been doing.

Perhaps, why he’s been leaving you alone so much.

“I’m a coward.” He manages to say. He wipes at his face with a wadded handful of toilet tissue. “I started off going to bars, but that android, Connor…he talked sense into me and since, we just sit and talk.” He chucks the toilet paper into the bowl, and flushing it, doesn’t look at you. “…but ever since Cole - since we found out the reason we couldn’t try was -,”

“The doctor said it’s common for that to happen to older men,” you repeat what you read on the pamphlet at the fertility clinic. “It isn’t your fault.”

“What if I’m not built for this?” he asks, looking at you. His eyes are watery and search you for answers. But you’re not an encyclopedia of good news; you’re a human. Just like him. “What if after Cole…I’m…irreversible.”

Even though your husband smelt like bile, sweat, and peppermint, you draw him close, bringing his head toward your chest to cradle.

“What if I can’t be strong enough to be a father again?” he breathes, his words barely heard above the creaks of the old house.

“Then I’ll be strong for you.” You reply. “It’s a child, not a civil war. We can get through this.”

* * *

It was just over a month after your beloved Matilda came into your lives that you and Hank finally let visitors come to meet the new addition to the Anderson family. You parents came by last week, on their way back to Florida. And today, apart from all the friends and Hank’s work pals, Hank’s mother was around, along with her wily pre-21st century parenting methods. But more than that, it was _busy_. You constantly fussed over the eight-month-old, trying to keep her away from the catastrophe-seeking hands of your mother-in-law, and made sure there was a minimal amount of pass-the-baby games between friends.

As most of the people filtered out after the festivity, you realised that Hank’s partner, the RK800 android hadn’t left yet. It watched you with a silent poise of a machine pretending to be something it was not. You knew that this model had deviated during the civil war Hank helped come under control, and yet, you had barely spent time with him.

Noticing that Hank wasn’t around, you looked down at little Matilda in your arms and to the android. “Do you want to hold her?” you asked him.

He blinked, considering you. “Me? I am not an AX400. I do not know anything about childcare.”

You shake your head. “Do you know how _not_ to drop something when you hold it?” you asked him. He nodded, and swiftly, you passed him your child. “Just move your arm so her neck is supported - you’re a natural.” You smiled, “Connor, right?”

 “That is my name. I am a RK800 model, as well as Lieutenant Hank Anderson’s partner.” He confirmed.

You beam. “I just wanted to thank you. For being there for Hank, throughout all your cases, and,” you gesture to Matilda, “this process too. He might be a bit of an asshole sometimes, but he’s _my_ asshole.”

Connor nods. “I see now how you and Lieutenant Anderson are meant for each other.” He says, holding your new child close to him. “And like I look out for him at work, I intend to look out for you, and your small child as well.”

You chuckle at that, but it’s then you see Hank over Connor’s shoulder.

“What the fuck, Connor?” he says, in a playful tone that you haven’t heard for a while, “You trying to steal my partner?”

You take Matilda back from the android, beaming. “We’re conspiring, if nothing else.”

“Oh, I get it,” Hank laughs, and taking his work partner by the shoulder, he starts to walk him out. “…I’ll see you at work on Monday.”

“- and I will also see you there, Lieutenant.” Connor responded. “But not you, _________.” He adds, and before Hank closes the door, you see a wink.

Hank turns to you and Matilda, face exacerbated, but full of joy for once. He reaches out for Matilda, and you place her in his arms, his big arms that cradle her with a strength of love that anyone could see for miles.

“She’s so small,” he marvels, even though you’ve had her in the house for weeks now. “and she’s ours. Matilda Anderson.” He shakes his head, moving toward the nursery across the hall from the bedroom. “Remember my meltdown? What the hell was I worried about, not being strong?”

You twist the mobile above the cot, winding the planetarium-themed toy to begin singing its tune that often got her to sleep.

“That’s the thing, honey,” you whisper into his side, feeling the prickles of his beard against your cheek, “Having a baby…it takes a different kind of strength.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr on as @chaotic--lovely, and if you want to request a fic, check out [@pendragonfics](https://pendragonfics.tumblr.com/request_conditions)! ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿


End file.
